


On a Distant Shore

by BardicRaven



Category: I Dream of Jeannie
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Space, Archaeology, Exoplanets, Extraterrestrials, Gen, Outer Space, Space Archaeology, dead planets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:20:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: Some meetings are just meant to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Traincat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traincat/gifts).



It was supposed to have been an ordinary mission. Out, explore, document, back. Not even worth bringing the mother-ship along. A small-craft would do.

It was supposed to have been an ordinary mission.

Except suddenly, it wasn’t.

* * *

Tony Nelson was exploring among the ruins of the dead planet, wondering, as he always did, just what had happened to turn a civilization from thriving to dust. Was it a cosmic accident? One that had stolen their atmosphere, turned their world from living to dead in a celestial heartbeat?

Was it by their own hand, intended or not? Like all graduates of the Space Academy, he’d taken the unit on the Charred Worlds, harsh reminder that what they did had consequences. No-one returned unchanged from the pilgrimage to the Charred Worlds which closed the unit, required of all who worked with other worlds, even those who worked with nothing but dead worlds, worlds that, for whatever reason, had already had their fate decided long ago.

He shook himself, brought himself back to the present, to the job at hand. While the ‘suit’ he wore was a much longer-lasting version of the emergency spray-on spacesuits, still, it would not last forever, and it did not do to be too far away when the time to return drew near.

Nor to have gone out without completing the mission. He’d done that, exactly once, back at the beginning of his career, and taken great pains to never do so again, after the chewing-out he’d received as the result of his failure.

He went back to exploring, noting down the location of important relics, things that the xeno-archaeologists would find interesting in one way or another. Things they would want to make note of. Things they would want to explore further.

Time was beginning to wind down, and he was completing the circle he’d been sent out to cover, when he noticed a bottle lodged in a crevice. It looked like it had been the junction of two walls once, but now, it was a broken testament to the civilization that had been there before, one wall standing tall in its ruination, the other side cut short.

He could never say, afterward, exactly what had drawn his eye to the bottle. It wasn’t as if it were in a place where it would be easily seen. It lay in stark shadow up against the ruined walls, harsh blackness hiding all but the occasional glint of gold at the bottom. Most of the atmosphere had left this world along with whoever had been here before, so there was no spreading of the light to help show its location.

But it did catch his eye, and, after checking his chronometer to make sure he still had time left, he walked the few paces over to study it more closely. It was black and gold, with just a hint of green, and seemed much younger than the rest of the relics he had come across, and in far better condition. The gold paint that was probably what had caught his eye surprisingly intact for the age the bottle must have been.

He was just going to make a note of its location and move on, as he was trained to do, but something made him stop and stay, and, most surprising of all, pick it up. Not with his hand of course – even the best ‘suits’ were no match for direct contact with the intense cold of space – but with the special robot-arm he had with him for those items that were worth bringing in for further examination.

As he held it up where he could see it better, he blinked in astonishment, before shaking his head. No, he decided, he couldn't possibly have seen what he thought he’d just seen – a pair of eyes looking back at him as he looked at them. He made a mental note to see his superior-officer about some time off as soon as he returned, and began to put the bottle back down.

As he did so, he felt a pull at his mind, a tug at his consciousness. _No. Please._ echoed in his head. Forget when he got back, he thought, he was going to request leave starting immediately.

He was just tapping his headset to open up a comm channel back to his ship, and from there to the mother-ship, when he ‘heard’ the voice again. Young. Female. Scared. _No, you’re not crazy. I need help._

Tony wasn’t convinced that the mysterious voice was the one needing the help, but he answered it anyway. “Who are you?”

His ship answered instead. “Command not understood.”

“Not you.” he replied irritably. His small-craft seemed to take an almost-human delight in bedevilling him sometimes. Apparently, this was to be one of those times.

“There is no-one else in your immediate area,” the ship responded patiently (and wasn't there just the faintest hint of condescension?), ever logical.

“Disregard communications until specifically addressed,” Tony snapped, not wanting to get into an argument with his ship. All communications between personnel and ship were logged, and this was not a conversation he wanted to have recorded.

“Affirmative.” And then there was blessed silence in his comm-link. “So, who are you?” he asked the mysterious voice again.

 _You don’t have to say things out loud,_ the ‘voice’ replied. _Just think them._

 _All right,_ he thought but did not say, _who are you?_

_Open the bottle and you’ll see._

_Now why would I want to do that?_ he asked. Tony Nelson hadn’t lived to the ripe old age he had by listening to commands from random strangers. There were days he had a hard enough time listening to the commands given by his superiors, never mind strangers.

Especially strangers found on a supposedly dead world.

 _Because I need your help,_ the ‘voice’ replied matter-of-factly.

_And that’s supposed to matter to me?_

_Yes._

_Why?_

_Because I need you._ the voice replied as if that was all the answer he should need.

 _Why?_ He suddenly felt like he was a child again, endlessly questioning everything around him. His parents had said even then that he’d make good Corps material. Of course, then they’d usually added something like “If he manages to make it that far without driving everyone crazy with all those questions..” which rather muted the compliment.

Still. He gotten to the position he had by questioning everything. It was what made him a good archeo-scout.

And it seemed to be serving him well here, too.

_Because my evil sister put me here, knowing I’d be trapped, and… look, just trust me, okay? I mean you no harm, and I need your help._

He stood there for a moment, before he heard his chronometer beep. Time to return to the ship. _All right,_ he ‘said’. _But not here. I need to get back._

 _Off this world?_ the ‘voice’ asked hopefully.

_On my ship, but yes, it takes me off of this world._

He wasn’t exactly sure what noise the ‘voice’ made next, but to his ears, it sounded suspiciously like ‘ _yipee!_ ’. No matter. Whatever it had been, it was not as important as getting back to his ship in the next five minutes, before the ‘suit’ wore through, letting the vacuum and the cold of space next to his all-too vulnerable body.

Once he was back in his small-craft,, he waited for the bottle to warm up, answering the plaintive query of ‘Y _ou promised!_ ’ with ‘ _And I will, but I don’t want to get space-bite while doing it._ ’. The ‘voice’ seemed to understand the sense of that, for it was quiet until the bottle had warmed up to room temperature from the near-space temperatures it had been at before.

 _Ready?_ he asked.

 _Am I!_ the ‘voice’ replied.

 _All right,_ he ‘said’, _here goes._ And he opened the bottle. For a moment, nothing happened, and then a stream of smoke began to pour out of the bottle, coalescing into the body of a beautiful young women. She looked human to him, but if there was one thing that Tony Nelson had learned in his time at both Academy and Corps, it was that appearances were often deceiving. So, for now he'd reserve judgement on what she was.

“Master!” she cried on seeing him, immediately dropping to her knees in front of him, bowing her head.

Then, as he bent down and drew her to her feet, Tony Nelson uttered the words that would change his life forever. “It’s not 'Master', it’s 'Tony'. And what is your name?” His fear and uncertainty were gone, replaced by the surety that this ‘woman’, whoever and whatever she might turn out to be, would bring him nothing but joy. And interesting times.

“Jeannie.”

**Author's Note:**

> ##### 'allo!
> 
> ##### Hope you enjoyed this little look at another way they might have come together, in another place and time.
> 
> ##### This doesn't have to be a one-off. I started seeing the next scene or so, and if there is interest, I may play with this in the New Year, once Yule Goats and other such creatures are revealed.
> 
> ##### So vote in the comments section if you'd like to see more some day, and have Happy Hollydays, whereever you may be, and whatever is included in those Hollydays!
> 
> ##### Yule Goat to be Named Later


End file.
